A tungsten wedding ring is a pretty silly/unsafe thing to have. I'll readily admit it's cool but I like my fingers too much to worry about degloving one of them. That said using it as an example of or point of comparison for most anything is pretty unrealistic.
Similarly I am not willing to wrap a LiPo battery around one of my fingers. Absolutely not. I suspect this is in part why we have not seen more smartwatch bands doing the same.
Why would a tungsten band increase the chances of degloving your finger?
A tungsten band is a lot harder than a gold band. But a gold band is already way harder than your flesh. Jimmy Fallon was wearing a traditional platinum band when he nearly lost his finger.
If you want to reduce your risk, you should either not wear a ring or wear a silicone band.
In a hospital setting nobody will be degloving your finger - this is a common situation, and they have pliers that will crack/shatter the tungsten for removal.
I live in a town of <15k people, and it’s the county seat. Our hospital can handle tungsten carbide rings without issue. I checked before getting one for this very reason (though I now wear an Oura as my wedding ring).
Steel toed work boots are almost never allowed to have a steel toe anymore. It is always plastic which is just as strong but it shatters when it breaks so they don't have to uncrush that once they get whatever fell on your toes off.
There are some rare exceptions for specific jobs, see OSHA (or your country equivalent) for the exact rules that apply to you.
This isn't remotely true. Steel is absolutely still allowed. The steel toe is designed to collapse without crushing the toe. When that happens, the boot needs to be replaced.
There are composites which are fiber based but those aren't labelled as steel toes, they aren't designed to shatter and it's not plastic.
Osha allows steel where plastic (fiber is a plastic) has issues. However they have complex rules and none of the industries I work with will allow steel.
I've been wearing them all my life all over North America. Very few industries require metal-free footwear. Composite toes (since we're getting carried away with various terms, that's the actual term and fabrication method, which is fiber mesh and epoxy) still have downsides. Those don't apply if you're a white collar guy and just need them because of regulations.
But if you're an actual worker that relies on them to save your toes, CT has much worse puncture resistance than ST. So it's trivial to puncture with a framing nail gun or cut through it if you rest a board on your toe, for example.
They also shatter when something heavy falls on them. If the thing bounces and you're quick enough to pull your foot, then great. If not, the second bounce will be shattering your toes and your boot will be filled with fleshy composite soup that is impossible to save. A steel toe in that situation will just bend and odds are good that your foot will be salvageable.
Go check out the OSHA injury reports my dude. All it takes is something like a seemingly harmless hop over a short chain fence gone wrong. Where any other band would deform or break, that fucker's taking everything else with it.
My dude the question is not what danger a ring poses but why tungsten poses a higher risk. The flesh on your finger is much softer than a normal wedding band. Again, Jimmy Fallon is an excellent example of this. He fell in his kitchen and his very traditional platinum band took the flesh off his finger when it caught on the counter.
I loved my first tungsten wedding ring so much I got another one when I remarried. It has a really satisfying feeling of solidity. Your safety concern does not trouble me at all: yes, it's a very hard metal, but it's brittle. You can't cut a stuck tungsten ring loose the way you can a gold ring, but you can easily break it, using a hammer or a pair of vice-grips.
Amen. As an EMT/Firefighter you'll never catch me wearing a ring made of any kind of metal. I have seen and dealt with some pretty horrific things. Degloving is the only traumatic injury that makes me queasy to think about.
Similarly I am not willing to wrap a LiPo battery around one of my fingers. Absolutely not. I suspect this is in part why we have not seen more smartwatch bands doing the same.